Open Innovation Search for Healthcare Solutions

The Story:

Artificial intelligence is a fast-moving field with dramatic changes to society and the economy predicted. It is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous presence in our lives and its impact will be felt in multiple industries from agriculture to aerospace and entertainment to engineering.

AI has unlimited potential and one area where it could make a huge positive difference is in healthcare. For example, the technology could organize patient treatment plans better and furnish physicians with all the information they need to make more accurate diagnoses and predict with greater certainty various treatment options.

Open Innovation Challenge

The myriad possibilities have got some medical professionals, companies and innovators very excited, including the US-based Humana Inc. In 2017, the for-profit American health insurance company launched the Humana Innovation Challenge. It was an open innovation search for ideas from entrepreneurs, startups and students to solve healthcare and user-experience problems for members of Medicare (a national social insurance program in the United States).

The winner of the $10,000 top prize was MedMind, an artificial intelligence platform that increases well-being through personalized patient engagement and intuitive, predictive population health management. The mobile and voice platform aims to streamline and improve wellness screenings, appointment attendance and chronic disease management. The innovation was the brainchild of Martin Shapiro, an MD / MBA candidate at the University of Southern California, and Deanna Iam, a B.A. Design, Media Arts student at UCLA

The panel of judges which was made up of Humana and Silicon Valley leaders also awarded prizes to other teams. Among them were:

Lexigram, a California-based startup that uses machine learning and natural language processing to combine structured and unstructured health plan data to give all stakeholders a comprehensive overview of a patient and their care.

Vesalius, a mobile app to help Medicare members make better health decisions by tracking their health records, displaying them more clearly and framing the experience as a journey.

In hosting this open innovation competition Humana was exposed to a broad pool of talent that brought with it fresh insights and new ways of looking at healthcare problems.

"This Challenge was a phenomenal way to expose Humana to stimulating ideas about new technologies and new ways of thinking about how to help our members navigate the complex world of healthcare information," said Roberto Roitz, Director of Discovery and Open Innovation, part of Humana’s Health Care Trend & Innovation team.

"We recognize that we need to be not just consumers of innovation outside of Humana, but active contributors as well. We aim to be the partner of choice for healthcare innovators as we advocate for the success of entrepreneurs and startups driving new ideas and models that can change our industry."

Capitalizing on Innovation

Humana will be giving further guidance to some of the winning teams to help them improve their prototypes and get closer to a solution that can be put to use.